Director

Screenplay

I can't think of another recent film that has treated the death of an animal with as much casual cruelty as "Murder of a Cat." Don't get me wrong: while I love cats dearly, the operative word in that sentence is "casual" since "Murder of a Cat," a blackly-comic murder-mystery,
is supposed to be cruel. This may sound odd, but the film's best gags
and plot twists would consequently be much improved if director Gillian
Greene, and co-writers Christian Magalhaes and Robert Snow took greater
pains to mock their unreliable lead protagonist, a lonely bachelor who
vows to catch his cat's killer. Viewers are supposed to pity and/or
laugh at Clinton (Fran Kranz of "The Cabin in the Woods"), a
high-strung man-child who "[demands] justice" when his Russian blue
Mouser is found with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his belly. But even
if you can accept that there's nothing inherently wrong with being a
little misanthropic in the right context, you'll probably find that "Murder of a Cat"'s mean streak isn't wide enough.

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When
we first meet Clinton, he's already fairly pathetic. He lives in his
mom's basement, where he watches "Who's the Boss?" while making his own
line of action figures. Then his cat dies, and Clinton loses it. He
bypasses local Sheriff Hoyle (J.K. Simmons) and launches an
investigation that leads him to question everyone, including Greta
(Nikki Reed), a woman with a mysterious past and a missing Russian blue,
and Ford (Greg Kinnear), a suspiciously chipper local businessman.

For
a while, Clinton simply looks unhinged. He whines persistently about
how Mouser "was my best friend," a claim that any pet-owner knows isn't
that crazy. But Clinton isn't just an
animal lover: he's a nerd, which in the eyes of the movie makes him
developmentally deranged and hyper-jumpy, too. Almost everyone else in "Murder
of a Cat" dismisses Clinton for that reason: he is, as a local paper
puts it, a "harmless oddball." He talks excitedly about gathering clues,
interrogating suspects, and protecting Greta with bottomless reserves
of boyish zeal. But because nobody in the film but Greta believes in
Clinton's cause, his quirky behavior often manifests in shrill pleas
that fall on unsympathetic deaf ears.

Since
Clinton's character-defining desperation is the thing that keeps both
his character's search, and the film's plot moving forward, "Murder
of a Cat" often feels like it's treading water. Kranz's performance is a
little too schticky, though his role is essentially a one-note joke.
What really rankles is that Greene and her co-creators don't fully
exploit the fact that Clinton is a comic foil in his own story. Amateur
gumshoes are supposed to be reactive by nature since clues come to them,
not the other way around. But everyone tiptoes around Clinton, and that
leaves Kranz stranded without good material. The film's plot consequently feels like a very bland character's
search for a personality.

In this light, Hoyle
and Edie (Blythe Danner), Clinton's mom, are both especially
disappointing. They constantly restore order to Clinton's world, making
every false move he makes feel completely safe. Their kind indifference
speaks to how unproductively likable Clinton is. He's completely
harmless, and everyone knows it, even Hoyle, who humors Clinton
throughout the film, and rarely ever complains. Clinton glides from one
episode to the next, and never encounters any real obstacles, just more
dots that he can connect in his own time.

But
remember: Clinton is, based on his behavior, supposed to be pathetic. He
even says as much when he explains to Greta in one of the film's best
lines that he always wanted to be a detective: "I
used to run around in tighty-whities and a trench-coat and interrogate
strangers. I was 15." That's a funny line, but Kranz is off-camera when
he delivers it, suggesting that Greene couldn't bear to film her lead
protagonist debasing himself that much. If Clinton's creators aren't
committed to taking the wind out of his sails, then they shouldn't have
killed his cat in the first place.

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